Way to Go, Slovenia! Not So Hot, Team USA.

Re-ranking the 2014 Winter Olympics medal table by population and GDP.

American figure skater Ashley Wagner knows the United States should be doing better in the Olympics, considering all the people and dollars it has.

Photo by Darron Cummings/Reuters

It’s easy to feel some nationalistic pride as yet another American athlete raises her arms in triumph in Sochi. In one sense, this is perfectly reasonable. Whatever country an athlete is from, winning a medal requires an unimaginable amount of hard work and talent. Even so, considering the United States is one of the world’s richest countries and one of its most populous, the USA’s medal haul at the Winter Olympics isn’t all that impressive.

At the time of this writing, the United States, with its hundreds of millions of people and multitrillion-dollar economy, is tied for the most medals with the Netherlands, a country without a tenth of the U.S.’s population or GDP. America’s performance is actually abysmal, though, considering its financial and human resources. As the following numbers from the website Medals Per Capita illustrate, the U.S. can boast only one medal per 16 million Americans, while Norway has one per a mere 280,000 Norwegians. Among the medal-winning countries, the U.S. has one of the lowest ratios of medal count to population. Similarly, the U.S. now stands at almost $800 billion of GDP for each of its 19 medals, while tiny Slovenia has a more impressive $8 billion for each of its six. (The data in the chart will be updated once per day throughout the Olympics.)

Country

Population per medal

Population per gold medal

GDP per medal(in billions)

GDP per gold medal(in billions)

Medals

Gold medals

Population

GDP (in billions)

Russia

4,348,485

11,038,462

$56

$143

33

13

143,500,000

$1,858

Norway

192,527

455,064

$19

$44

26

11

5,005,700

$486

Canada

1,390,856

3,477,140

$69

$174

25

10

34,771,400

$1,736

United States

11,192,214

34,820,222

$539

$1,677

28

9

313,382,000

$15,094

Germany

4,306,895

10,228,875

$188

$446

19

8

81,831,000

$3,571

Netherlands

697,157

2,091,471

$35

$105

24

8

16,731,770

$836

Switzerland

715,464

1,311,683

$58

$106

11

6

7,870,100

$636

Belarus

1,576,900

1,892,280

$9

$11

6

5

9,461,400

$55

Austria

497,226

2,113,209

$25

$105

17

4

8,452,835

$418

France

4,356,667

16,337,500

$185

$693

15

4

65,350,000

$2,773

Poland

6,416,833

9,625,250

$86

$129

6

4

38,501,000

$515

China

149,705,556

449,116,667

$811

$2,433

9

3

1,347,350,000

$7,298

South Korea

6,072,500

16,193,333

$140

$372

8

3

48,580,000

$1,116

Czech Rep.

1,313,025

5,252,102

$27

$108

8

2

10,504,203

$215

Slovenia

257,193

1,028,770

$6

$25

8

2

2,057,540

$50

Sweden

632,712

4,745,342

$36

$269

15

2

9,490,683

$538

Finland

1,081,408

$53

$266

5

1

5,407,040

$266

Great Britain

15,565,500

62,262,000

$608

$2,432

4

1

62,262,000

$2,432

Japan

15,956,250

127,650,000

$733

$5,867

8

1

127,650,000

$5,867

Slovakia

5,445,324

5,445,324

$96

$96

1

1

5,445,324

$96

Ukraine

22,822,210

$83

$165

2

1

45,644,419

$165

Australia

7,626,873

$457

3

0

22,880,619

$1,372

Croatia

4,290,612

$64

1

0

4,290,612

$64

Italy

7,597,066

$274

8

0

60,776,531

$2,195

Kazakhstan

16,718,000

$186

1

0

16,718,000

$186

Latvia

517,593

$7

4

0

2,070,371

$28

Why? Maybe it’s America’s relatively warm climes, or preference for not-so-wintry sports. In some events, the U.S. hardly competes at all: In nearly a century of the Winter Olympics, Americans have won just one medal each in cross-country skiing, ski jumping, and curling. The relative success of countries like Slovenia, Latvia, and Austria shows that a country’s culture can be more important than its population or economy when it comes to securing Olympic gold.

Chris Kirk is aweb developer at New York magazine and Slate’s former interactives editor. Follow him on Twitter.